Soft Cop/ Hard Cop

It's important to remember who they both work for.

Compare and contrast, two from Common Dreams tonight:

Gareth Porter:

Admiral William Fallon, then President George W. Bush’s nominee to head the Central Command (CENTCOM), expressed strong opposition in February to an administration plan to increase the number of carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf from two to three and vowed privately there would be no war against Iran as long as he was chief of CENTCOM, according to sources with access to his thinking. Fallon’s resistance to the proposed deployment of a third aircraft carrier was followed by a shift in the Bush administration’s Iran policy in February and March away from increased military threats and toward diplomatic engagement with Iran. That shift, for which no credible explanation has been offered by administration officials, suggests that Fallon’s resistance to a crucial deployment was a major factor in the intra-administration struggle over policy toward Iran.

The plan to add a third carrier strike group in the Gulf had been a key element in a broader strategy discussed at high levels to intimidate Iran by a series of military moves suggesting preparations for a military strike.

Admiral Fallon’s resistance to a further buildup of naval striking power in the Gulf apparently took the Bush administration by surprise. Fallon, then Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, had been associated with naval aviation throughout his career, and last January, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates publicly encouraged the idea that the appointment presaged greater emphasis on the military option in regard to the U.S. conflict with Iran...

Matthew Rothschild:

Leave it to Dick Cheney to dash hopes for any cooler heads to prevail between Washington and Tehran.

Remember, it was Cheney who did everything in his power to hype the Iraq War and scuttle any possibility of a diplomatic solution prior to that conflict.

Now he’s doing the same with Iran.

Even as the State Department and the National Security Council are at least exploring the possibility of talking with Tehran, the Vice President of the United States, in typical fashion, is sabotaging that effort.

On Friday, aboard an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, Cheney rattled a saber at Ahmedinejad.

Cheney said: “With two carrier strike groups in the Gulf, we’re sending clear messages to friends and adversaries alike.”

In case anyone missed what he was referring to, Cheney spelled it out: “We’ll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region.”

By “with others,” Cheney was referring to Israel, which has already threatened to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities. Back in January 2005, Cheney sympathized with Israel’s desire to attack Iran first:

“One of the concerns people have is that Israel might do it without being asked, that if in fact the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had a significant nuclear capability, given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of the state of Israel, that the Israelis might well decide to act first.”

Cheney also may have been referring to Saudi Arabia, which doesn’t want to see an ascendant Shiite Iran across the gulf.

In any event, Cheney’s message got through.

Ahmedinejad, who thrives on rhetorical clashes with Washington, warned that Iran would retaliate if the United States attacked it.

And that’s no idle threat, either.

If Bush and Cheney are crazy enough to bomb Iran, and there’s no reason to suspect they’re not, Iran would make life even more miserable for the United States in Iraq, and it could also destabilize the world oil markets, with devastating consequences for our economy.

But Bush and Cheney have shown us already that they don’t consider the consequences.

Prior to the Iraq War, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt warned that toppling Saddam would create “100 bin Ladens.”

Mubarak just warned Cheney again, this time saying that a war with Iran would have “grave repercussions on the region.”

This warning may have as little impact as the last.

Gates may have pulled a fast one on Cheneyburton with Fallon's appointment.

Or, Fallon's promotion by the Bu$hCo may have been a nod to the Consigliere's Don(s), the new landlords of the Cheneyburton enterprise, who want to keep this war at a useful simmer and not a raging boil.

The White Man's Burden

The blank check greases the axles of the Endless War, Justin Raimondo via Chris Floyd:

The news I have for "netroots" types and Huffington Post liberals who see the Democratic Party as the major if not only hope for the antiwar movement can be summed up in two words: forget it. Majority leader Sen. Harry Reid recently let the cat out of the bag when he said, "There is new reason this week to believe that a bipartisan consensus on Iraq is emerging."

Translation: the sellout is coming, if it isn't already here.

American voters sent a clear message to Washington last November when they voted to put an ostensibly antiwar Democratic Congress in power: they told pollsters the war was the big issue, and, furthermore, they wanted out of Iraq. They voted Democratic not because they suddenly believed that party would end "the culture of corruption" – which is a very bipartisan phenomenon, and voters aren't dumb enough to believe otherwise – but because they took seriously Democratic promises to get us out of Iraq. Before the election, leading Democrats called for a timetable aiming at complete "redeployment" of U.S. troops out of Iraq: immediately after the election, however, the Dems capitulated to the "surge" (even as their "antiwar" rhetoric waxed louder). Last week the House voted down a measure that would have withdrawn the troops in nine months. If you follow the link you'll see that Madam Speaker allowed the withdrawal vote "in the hope that her rank-and-file would then unite behind the funding bill" – a two-part bill that would release some $48 billion initially and then schedule a summertime vote to appropriate $52.8 billion more to cover expenses until the end of September.

The White House has threatened to veto the two-part funding ploy but coupled this with an offer to negotiate on the Benchmark Question. All eyes are now on the Senate, reports the Christian Science Monitor, "where majority leader Harry Reid and White House officials have been hunkered down in secret negotiations. Last week, Bush said he had empowered White House negotiators 'to find common ground on benchmarks.'"

Caught between the Democratic Party's antiwar base and the War Party's control of the reins of power in Washington, Pelosi and Reid have been walking a tightrope between the two, but their balancing act is increasingly untenable. Pressure from the ranks of groups such as MoveOn.org – whose leadership initially colluded with the Democratic sellout – has forced a turnaround, and the MoveOners have now issued an ultimatum of sorts to the Dems in the form of an open letter: they're threatening to move "into opposition"!

It's link-rich, too, and goes on for quite a little bit longer. Tasty stuff. Rich but, alas, not filling.

Because we don't have the Dems. I have to agree with Justin, I've been pounding this drum for awhile- we don't. What we have is an option to aid in the change of the Company Chair. Maybe.

It's only maybe, because the Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton crew have consistently shown themselves more concerned with their Neo-Feudal perogatives than with making money for the Company in the long term.

It also creeps out many card carrying Reptilicans how gauche the Christianistas are. How they rule all with the fist. Even the other Aristocrats. It's enough to make Soros send money to the DLC.

We don't have Dems. That leaves us with nothing that can change the equation.



There is only one thing you can say for certain. If the $ystem approves the solution, the solution is no solution at all. Lacking answers, the best that can be done is to watch, and learn, and try to stay out of the crush as the $ystem takes the arc of its decline to its lowest state.

Soft Landing with a Golden Parachute

From Gouda at the discussion board at Rigorous Intuition:

LONDON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet has joined the British research firm thought to have provided the inspiration for 'Q', the character who creates spy gadgets for James Bond.

Tenet has been appointed an independent non-executive director of QinetiQ, the company said on Tuesday.

"I am especially interested in the capacity of the company's technologies to meet a number of the challenges faced by our nations' military and intelligence personnel," Tenet said.

One of the longest serving U.S. spymasters in history, Tenet was CIA director from 1997 to 2004.

He served under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush before quitting in June 2004, citing personal reasons.

Critics blamed the CIA during his reign for shortcomings in intelligence gathered in the run-up to war in Iraq and questioned whether more could have been done to predict the September 11 hijackings.

QinetiQ is partly owned by U.S. private equity firm Carlyle Group, whose advisers have included former U.S. President George Bush and former British Prime Minister John Major.

Once a secretive part of Britain's Ministry of Defense, the firm was listed on the London Stock Exchange in February.

That's special. Gouda goes on to note the Wikipedia post for QinetiQ before the Company scrubs it:

QinetiQ (LSE: QQ.) is a British defence technology company, made out of the greater part of the government agency DERA when it was split up in June 2001 (with the smaller part forming Dstl). The Chief Executive at inception was the present day Chairman Sir John Chisholm. The CEO is Graham Love.

QinetiQ solves defence and security problems at the leading edge of both the development and application of science and technology. For example, it made the semi-intelligent ultrasound scuba diver detector called Cerberus.

When Defence Minister Lewis Moonie announced that QinetiQ was created, he said that the company would remain a British company, based in the UK. The Ministry of Defence would keep a 'Special Share' in the company, and safeguards would be in place to prevent conflicts of interest. In February 2003, the U.S. private equity firm the Carlyle Group acquired a 33.8% share in the company for £42m. Current ownership is split between the MOD (56%), Carlyle Group (31%) and staff (13%). The Carlyle Group was expected to invest for three to five years, after which a stock exchange float would take place.

As a privatised company, QinetiQ is now one of the largest defence research organisations in the world. While part of DERA, the defence research sites that now form QinetiQ carried out testing, research and development, including the invention of liquid crystal displays, the technology for flat panel speakers, microwave radar, Chobham armour, and thermal imagers. In recent years QinetiQ has also developed software products, especially those for the defence and security industries.

QinetiQ has a long term agreement (25 years) with the Ministry of Defence to manage military ranges. It is a major stakeholder in the UK Defence Technology Centre which place military research contracts on behalf of the UK Ministry of Defence.

Well, damn.

For those of you into heavy tinfoil, the rest of Gouda's post. Which, I think, has a good point:

What can QinetiQ do for your semi-legit organization, government, conglomerate, racket, faction, and secret service, society, or bloodline keen to obscure massive conflicts of interest and synergize forces in the noble culling of the masses? A few of their chivalric strengths:

Weaponeering for life

Electromagnetic research

Communications, analysis and data fusion

Note those last three links land you squarely in the middle of the QintiQ website, which is probably like surfing at DARPA. You will get cookies, and your ISP address will be noted.

Done Deal

Over a year ago I posted on the potential buyout of Chrysler by Cerberus Capital Management. The New York Pravda now reports it's a done deal.

Everything I said then still goes. Steve Feinberg's a Rethuglican bankroller and bully boy, who took care of Dan Quayle for Poppy when Bu$h I went under the Clinton steamroller. Basically, Chrysler is now owned by Citigroup and the same corporate entity that owns Burger King and builds military bases Iraq.

They really helped, though.

Sith Lord meets Crown Prince

Cheneyburton meets the new landlord for his lackey's new main offices.

Not Bu$hie's Base

Bob Herbert:

...According to the most recent government figures, 37 million Americans are living below the official poverty threshold, which is $19,971 a year for a family of four. That’s one out of every eight Americans, and many of them are children.

More than 90 million Americans, close to a third of the entire population, are struggling to make ends meet on incomes that are less than twice the official poverty line. In my book, they’re poor.

We don’t see poor people on television or in the advertising that surrounds us like a second atmosphere. We don’t pay much attention to the millions of men and women who are changing bedpans, or flipping burgers for the minimum wage, or vacuuming the halls of office buildings at all hours of the night. But they’re there, working hard and getting very little in return.

The number of poor people in America has increased by five million over the past six years, and the gap between rich and poor has grown to historic proportions. The richest one percent of Americans got nearly 20 percent of the nation’s income in 2005, while the poorest 20 percent could collectively garner only a measly 3.4 percent.

A new report from a highly respected task force on poverty put together by the Center for American Progress tells us, “It does not have to be this way.” The task force has made several policy recommendations, and said that if all were adopted poverty in the U.S. could be cut in half over the next decade.

The tremendous number of people in poverty is an enormous drag on the U.S. economy. And one of the biggest problems is the simple fact that so many jobs pay so little that even fulltime, year-round employment is not enough to raise a family out of poverty. One-fifth of the working men in America and 29 percent of working women are in such jobs.

Peter Edelman, a Georgetown law professor who was a co-chairman of the task force, said, “An astonishing number of people are working as hard as they possibly can but are still in poverty or have incomes that are not much above the poverty line.”

So the starting point for lifting people out of poverty should be to see that men and women who are working are adequately compensated for their labor. The task force recommended that the federal minimum wage, now $5.15 an hour, be raised to half the average hourly wage in the U.S., which would bring it to $8.40.

The earned-income tax credit, which has proved very successful in supplementing the earnings of low-wage working families, should be expanded to cover more workers, the task force said. It also recommended expanded coverage of the federal child care tax credit, which is currently $1,000 per child for up to three children.

A crucial component to raising workers out of poverty would be an all-out effort to ensure that workers are allowed to form unions and bargain collectively. As the task force noted, “Among workers in similar jobs, unionized workers have higher pay, higher rates of health coverage, and better benefits than do nonunionized workers.”

In a recent interview about poverty, former Senator John Edwards told me: “Organizing is so important. We have 50 million service economy jobs and we’ll probably have 10 or 15 million more over the next decade. If those jobs are union jobs, they’ll be middle-class families. If not, they’re more likely to live in poverty. It’s that strong.”

The task force made several other recommendations, including proposals to ease access to higher education for poor youngsters, to help former prisoners find employment, to develop a more equitable unemployment compensation system, and to establish housing policies that would make it easier for poor people to move from neighborhoods of concentrated poverty to areas with better employment opportunities and higher-quality public services...

Shell Game With Live Ammunition

The ever vigilant Lambert caught this in Foreign Affairs:

Summary: By rushing into Iraq instead of finishing off the hunt for Osama bin Laden, Washington has unwittingly helped its enemies: al Qaeda has more bases, more partners, and more followers today than it did on the eve of 9/11. Now the group is working to set up networks in the Middle East and Africa -- and may even try to lure the United States into a war with Iran. Washington must focus on attacking al Qaeda's leaders and ideas and altering the local conditions in which they thrive.

Lambert has some choice cuts, and the whole thing is worth reading.

Yes, Virginis, there are some good, competent spooks still working for the Company, despite the best efforts of Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton to get rid of them. You'd best listen to them instead of a bunch of oilmen from Texas if you want to keep your Republic.

Hell, lsten to them if you even want to keep your Empire. From the Soviets to the Romans, history records the fall of most Imperial ambitions once corrupt fundamentalists grab the reins of power.

Let's read some highlights of what Bruce Reidel, an honest Imperialist has to say:

Al Qaeda is a more dangerous enemy today than it has ever been before. It has suffered some setbacks since September 11, 2001: losing its state within a state in Afghanistan, having several of its top operatives killed, failing in its attempts to overthrow the governments of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. But thanks largely to Washington's eagerness to go into Iraq rather than concentrate on hunting down al Qaeda's leaders, the organization now has a solid base of operations in the badlands of Pakistan and an effective franchise in western Iraq. Its reach has spread throughout the Muslim world, where it has developed a large cadre of operatives, and in Europe, where it can claim the support of some disenfranchised Muslim locals and members of the Arab and Asian diasporas. Osama bin Laden has mounted a successful propaganda campaign to make himself and his movement the primary symbols of Islamic resistance worldwide. His ideas now attract more followers than ever.

Bin Laden's goals remain the same, as does his basic strategy. He seeks to, as he puts it, "provoke and bait" the United States into "bleeding wars" throughout the Islamic world; he wants to bankrupt the country much as he helped bankrupt, he claims, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The demoralized "far enemy" would then go home, allowing al Qaeda to focus on destroying its "near enemies," Israel and the "corrupt" regimes of Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. occupation of Iraq helped move his plan along, and bin Laden has worked hard to turn it into a trap for Washington. Now he may be scheming to extend his strategy by exploiting or even triggering a war between the United States and Iran.

Decisively defeating al Qaeda will be more difficult now than it would have been a few years ago. But it can still be done, if Washington and its partners implement a comprehensive strategy over several years, one focused on both attacking al Qaeda's leaders and ideas and altering the local conditions that allow them to thrive. Otherwise, it will only be a matter of time before al Qaeda strikes the U.S. homeland again...

The U.S. invasion of Iraq took the pressure off al Qaeda in the Pakistani badlands and opened new doors for the group in the Middle East. It also played directly into the hands of al Qaeda leaders by seemingly confirming their claim that the United States was an imperialist force, which helped them reinforce various local alliances. In Iraq, Zarqawi adopted a two-pronged strategy to alienate U.S. allies and destabilize the country. He sought to isolate U.S. forces by driving out all other foreign forces with systematic terrorist attacks, most notably the bombings of the United Nations headquarters and the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad in the summer of 2003. More important, he focused on the fault line in Iraqi society -- the divide between Sunnis and Shiites -- with the goal of precipitating a civil war. He launched a series of attacks on the Shiite leadership, holy Shiite sites, and Shiite men and women on the street. He organized the assassination of the senior leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, in the summer of 2003, and the bombings of Shiite shrines in Najaf and Baghdad in March 2004 and in Najaf and Karbala in December 2004. Even by the ruthless standards of al Qaeda, Zarqawi excelled.

Zarqawi's strategy did prompt criticism from other jihadi groups and some second-guessing within al Qaeda, but it nevertheless succeeded brilliantly. In a letter to Zarqawi dated July 9, 2005, Zawahiri questioned the wisdom of igniting Sunni-Shiite hatred in the Muslim world, and Zarqawi became known within the movement as al Gharib (the Stranger) because of his extreme views. Still, he pressed ahead, and the al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan never challenged him publicly. Although he led only a small percentage of the Sunni militants in Iraq, Zarqawi was at the cutting edge of the insurgency, the engine of the civil war. By late 2004, he had formally proclaimed his allegiance to bin Laden, and bin Laden had anointed him "the prince of al Qaeda in Iraq..."

With two new bases secured and local alliances reinforced, al Qaeda has worked to expand its reach beyond Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. To vividly showcase its strength, al Qaeda records most of its operations and transmits the gruesome coverage to jihadi Web sites all over the world. The U.S invasion of Iraq and the chaos that followed were a boon to al Qaeda's propaganda efforts, as they offered tangible evidence, al Qaeda's leaders could argue, both that Washington had imperialist plans and that the jihad against U.S. forces was working.

Bin Laden made a landmark video recording in October 2004, in time for the presidential election in the United States, promising to bankrupt Washington in Afghanistan and Iraq. Largely silent in 2005, he made several announcements in 2006. On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, al Qaeda released a major statement entitled "The Manhattan Raid," featuring previously unseen videos of two of the 9/11 pilots and the most extensive discussion yet on the background and purpose of the operation. Zawahiri, al Qaeda's propaganda point man -- whose role is to reassure the faithful that the movement is alive and well -- has also become more prolific; he issued at least 15 messages in 2006. Overall, al Qaeda quadrupled its output of videos between 2005 and 2006 -- all propaganda instruments, of course, but also a means for the organization's leaders to rally its followers and send them instructions. According to one expert, there are also some 4,500 overtly jihadi Web sites that disseminate the al Qaeda leadership's messages.

...Bin Laden might also be nurturing bolder plans, such as exploiting or even triggering an all-out war between the United States and Iran. Indeed, there is evidence that al Qaeda in Iraq -- and elements of the Iraqi Sunni community -- increasingly consider Iran's influence in Iraq to be an even greater problem than the U.S. occupation. Al Qaeda worries about the Sunni minority's future in a Shiite-dominated Iraq after the Americans leave. Propaganda material of Sunni jihadists in Iraq and elsewhere openly discusses their fear that Iran will dominate a postoccupation Iraq and seek to restore the type of regional control that the Persian Empire had in the sixteenth century. In a remarkable statement last November, Zarqawi's successor, Abu Hamza al-Masri, thanked President George W. Bush for sending the U.S. Army to Iraq and thus giving al Qaeda the "great historic opportunity" to engage Americans in direct fighting on Arab ground. (He also said that Bush was "the most stupid and ominous president" in U.S. history.) But he warned that the invasion had "revived the glory of the old Persian Safavid Empire in a very short period of time." Similarly, the self-proclaimed emir of the Islamic State of Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, issued a statement in February 2007 welcoming news that the U.S. government was considering sending more troops to Iraq and saying that he was eagerly looking forward to an American nuclear attack on Iran.

...Al Qaeda would especially like a full-scale U.S. invasion and occupation of Iran, which would presumably oust the Shiite regime in Tehran, further antagonize Muslims worldwide, and expand al Qaeda's battlefield against the United States so that it extends from Anbar Province in the west to the Khyber Pass in the east. It understands that the U.S. military is already too overstretched to invade Iran, but it expects Washington to use nuclear weapons. Baghdadi has told Sunnis in Iran to evacuate towns close to nuclear installations.

The biggest danger is that al Qaeda will deliberately provoke a war with a "false-flag" operation, say, a terrorist attack carried out in a way that would make it appear as though it were Iran's doing...

No doubt al Qaeda will claim a victory when the United States leaves Iraq. (It already does so at the sheer mention of withdrawal.) But it is unlikely that the Islamic State of Iraq will fare well after the occupation ends. Anbar and adjacent Sunni provinces have little water, few other natural resources, and no access to the outside world except through hostile territory. The Shiites and the Kurdish militias will have no compunction about attacking the Islamic State of Iraq. (Al Qaeda's own propaganda indicates that it fears the Shiites' wrath after the United States' departure more than it fears what would happen if the Americans stayed.)

Another essential aspect of the United States' war against al Qaeda is the war of ideas. Washington must learn to develop more compelling narratives for its actions. Its calls for bringing democracy to Iraq have not resonated, partly because its actions have not matched its rhetoric. Human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay have even further sullied the United States' reputation and honor. Washington should emphasize the concrete steps the United States is taking to heal differences between Islam and the West and to bring peace to Palestine and Kashmir, among other areas. Creating a new narrative will probably also require bringing to Washington (and London) new leaders who are untarnished by the events of the last few years.

The repackaging effort will also have to involve concrete actions to address the issues that al Qaeda invokes to win recruits, particularly the Arab-Israeli conflict but also the conflict in Kashmir...

t is now fashionable to call the struggle against al Qaeda the long war. It need not be so, even though helping to rebuild Afghanistan will require a long-term commitment. Decisive actions in key arenas could bring significant results in short order, and a focused strategy could eventually destroy the al Qaeda movement. On the other hand, a failure to adjust U.S. strategy would increase the risk that al Qaeda will launch another "raid" on the United States, this time perhaps with a weapon of mass destruction. For the last several years, al Qaeda's priority has been to bleed the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. Striking on U.S. soil has been a lesser goal. If al Qaeda survives, however, sooner or later it will attack the U.S. homeland again...

Likely some D.o'D. private contractor has nukes for sale at bargain basement prices to a discreet buyer. Why should they go to North Korea when most of the world's plutonium is where they want to detonate it, and under the control of people who value entrepreneurial ambition?

But here's the money quote, right at the end.

...The lesson is clear: al Qaeda is still too weak to overthrow established governments equipped with effective security services; it needs failed states to thrive.

Of course, with the AmeriTaliban from places like Regent University now controlling the administration of our Faith-based government, failed states will continue to bloom, at home and abroad, like madness in the Spring.

The Really Big One

You may have seen an article or heard a talking head mention in passing that astronomers think they've spotted the brightest (intrinsically brightest, that is) supernova ever spotted.

Here's a pic, and an explanation from the good people at NASA (and there are a few!):

The stellar explosion cataloged as supernova SN 2006gy shines in this wide-field image (left) of its host galaxy, NGC 1260, and expanded view (upper right panel) of the region surrounding the galaxy's core. In fact, given its estimated distance of 240 million light-years, SN 2006gy was brighter than, and has stayed brighter longer than, any previously seen supernova. The Chandra observations in the lower right panel establish the supernova's x-ray brightness and lend strong evidence to the theory that SN 2006gy was the death explosion of a star well over 100 times as massive as the Sun. In such an exceptionally massive star, astronomers suspect an instability producing matter-antimatter pairs led to the cosmic blast and obliterated the stellar core. Thus, unlike in other massive star supernovae, neither neutron star, or even black hole, would remain. Intriguingly, analogs in our own galaxy for SN 2006gy's progenitor may include the well-known, extremely massive star Eta Carinae.

The light captured in this image was released 240 million years ago, in the middle of the Triassic era. The newly emergent archosaurs were trouncing the amphibians for rule on earth, and starting to give the mammal-like reptiles a run for their money. Or, lacking money, their asses.



Some things never change.

Still Covert at Some Levels

Another blog I read a lot these busy days is Cryptogon.

Check out their take on The End of National Currency from the Company wonks at Foreign Affairs.

Kevin geeks out particularly at this paragraph:

...So what about gold? A revived gold standard is out of the question. In the nineteenth century, governments spent less than ten percent of national income in a given year. Today, they routinely spend half or more, and so they would never subordinate spending to the stringent requirements of sustaining a commodity-based monetary system. But private gold banks already exist, allowing account holders to make international payments in the form of shares in actual gold bars. Although clearly a niche business at present, gold banking has grown dramatically in recent years, in tandem with the dollar’s decline. A new gold-based international monetary system surely sounds far-fetched. But so, in 1900, did a monetary system without gold. Modern technology makes a revival of gold money, through private gold banks, possible even without government support.

So maybe he just geeked at The Company admitting what many have suspected for awhile now. Your cash ain't nothin' but trash, baby. The Big Boys have their own medium of exchange, and Guvmint's got nothing to do with it, except set the table, clean up, and eat the scraps.

How covert can three carrier groups get?

You have to wonder.

Jonathan Schwarz points out more evidence of not-so-covert action in Iran:

Rice and her colleagues in the administration decided to embark on a daring and risky third course: a coordinated campaign, directed with the help of the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates. While the “get tough” crew favored direct military action against Iran, the administration chose a more subtle mix of diplomatic and economic pressure, large-scale military exercises, psychological warfare, and covert operations. The bill for the covert part of this activity, which has involved funding sectarian political movements and paramilitary groups in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories, is said to amount to more than $300 million. It is being paid by Saudi Arabia and other concerned Gulf states, for whom the combination of a hasty American withdrawal from Iraq and a nuclear-armed Iran means trouble...

Sources in the United States and the Middle East familiar with the covert side of the American-led effort to “push back” Iran...pointed to an upsurge in antigovernment guerrilla activity inside Iran, including a bomb in Zahedan, the economic center of the province of Baluchistan, that killed 11 soldiers in the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on February 14; the mysterious death of the Iranian scientist Ardashir Hosseinpour, who worked on uranium enrichment at the Isfahan nuclear facility; and the defection of a high-ranking Iranian general named Ali Asgari, a former deputy minister of defense who was also the Revolutionary Guard officer responsible for training and supplying Hezbollah during its war against the Israelis in southern Lebanon in the 1980s. Iran’s oil infrastructure may be another likely target..."

What, waste oil? I doubt it. Oil's a sacrament for the Church of Bu$hCo-Cheneyburton.

This is about as covert as punching someone in the face.

But a nuclear-armed Iran? Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah. Yellowcake & Kool Colin's UN speech. It's not even funny anymore.

If terrorists detonate a nuke on American soil, it's most likely not going to be from Korea, Iran, or Russia. It will likely be good old American uranium or plutonium, enriched by Bechtel, and "secured" by a private contractor.

Tar Baby

Mahablog:

...Al Qaeda cannot defeat America, but it can trick America into defeating itself. The “historic trap” is not military; it’s psychological. All al Qaeda has to do is issue another video, mocking the U.S., and the entire American Right jumps up and dances to al Qaeda’s tune...

Read it all; and thanks again to Avedon.

There Goes the Neighborhood

...James H. Ottaway Jr., a trustee for most of the family shares and formerly a longtime Dow Jones executive and board member, said, “Dow Jones has no good reason to be sold to anyone.” And the reputation of The Journal and Dow Jones for serious, accurate and objective work, he said, “would be damaged if Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation take over Dow Jones,” he said.

“He has for a long time expressed his personal, political and business biases through his newspapers and television channels,” Mr. Ottaway said. The Post “regularly runs biased news stories and headlines supporting his friends, political candidates and public policies, and attacks people he personally opposes,” while at Fox News, “one man’s political opinions have become the editorial and news policy.”

He accused Mr. Murdoch of caving in to political pressure to advance his business interests, contrasting the actions of a News Corporation property, Star TV, in bowing to Chinese government censorship, with The Journal’s editorial page censure of Chinese human rights abuses. “I doubt its freedom to criticize the Chinese government would continue under Murdoch ownership,” he said.

The right answer to the News Corporation bid, Mr. Ottaway added, is that “Dow Jones is not for sale, at any price, to Rupert Murdoch.”

Good luck in keeping the barbarians out, Romans! You let them in to begin with, but as you're seeing, they care nothing for civilization.

Back to the Future

Once again, The New York Pravda misses the forest for the foliage.

SAUDI ARABIA, home of Islam’s holiest sites, flush with oil revenue, and increasingly the most influential player among Arab countries, has long resisted changing its ultratraditional ways. Now the intrusions of global economics and technology have begun to challenge some traditions in ways that the country’s idealists could not. And the strain that this is causing is showing in the form of surprisingly open debate about how much Saudis really want to modernize...

If there was anything open about it, I'd be surprised.

And, as usual, at the very end, once the mindless praise of the Royal House is ended, the cut to the chase:

...The leadership, for example, has not pushed to change a public school curriculum loaded with teachings that promote intolerance — even hostility — toward other faiths. But the curriculum often has been criticized as failing to prepare Saudi graduates for the modern world. So, after an international ranking put three Saudi universities among the world’s worst, the king announced that $32 billion would go to new education-related projects, including a plan to bring in foreign consultants.

In other words, the signals remain mixed. Ms. Abou Khalid, the sociology professor, said that for 14 years she and a few other women gathered in their homes to debate and discuss issues. A few months ago, the government announced that sites for such gatherings must first get permission, effectively shutting them down.

Muhammad Al Zulfa, a historian and member of the Shoura Council, an advisory body to the king that resembles a parliament but with no legislative authority, said: “The conservatives are not happy to see any change.” “The conservatives say they are protecting the values of society,” he said. “They are protecting their privileges...”

Much the same could be said about Bu$hie's base. In the end, Jihadist or Crusader, the men at the top have much more in common with each other than with the greater part of humanity.



They both view their ascendency as inevitable and a God-given right. They both seek to press their advantage at this moment in history. Why?

Because of this inevitable fact:



Except for those who own the world, a post-industrial return to Iron Age technology for the greater part of humanity will bring the old ways back.

If we let them do it.

Empire or Else

It's quite simple, if the Democrats win anything, the Enemy will detonate a nuke on American soil, and the Rethuglicans want you and your family to suffer.

Surely, a rational person thinks, there's no truth to that.

Why, take Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), for instance. Take him somewhere far, far, away. Please.

ROHRABACHER: After 9/11, we established different operations because we needed to do it, because we knew at that time there were people who were willing to kill tens of thousands of other human beings because they hate our way of life. Now, we’re only talking about the question at hand — we’ve looked at your report — we’re talking about a minuscule number of people here as compared to the number of people who are being protected. And does that mean — and of the minuscule number of people, 100, 200 people who are being held in this way, how many of those have been mistreated? How many of those have actually suffered the type of unfair treatment because they themselves really aren’t members of al Qaeda and they were just, their name was mistaken. For example, I know in one or two cases you have a man whose name was exactly the same name as a Muslim that was involved in al Qaeda. To the degree there are a few of those cases, we should do our best to make sure those cases don’t exist, try to find a system to root them out.

But, here’s the other shoe dropping, we are at war, and we’ve got to make sure that we do not let go 50 terrorists who will go out and plant a bomb in London and kill 20,000 people in order to protect that one person who we arrested accidentally because his name was the same. That’s the type of unfortunate consequence.

[Audience groans.]

Well, I hope it’s your families, I hope it’s your families that suffer the consequences. Mr. Chairman, I will be very happy to talk to everybody afterwards if you want to talk to me, but in terms of the hearing, I’d like to make my points without having it animated. One person — if we let, if in order to protect the rights of one or two people, or five people or ten people, who are mistakenly abducted because their names were the same or because they went to a mosque that they didn’t know this thing was going on in the back room, if 10 of those people suffer those consequences, but in order for us to take 90 other people off the street who are intent and involved in plans that would slaughter tens of thousands of our citizens, I’m afraid that’s the price we pay in a real world. And the United States, we’re not ghouls. We’re not, we don’t, we’re not, we don’t want to torture somebody because he has a bad name. We want to get information from somebody that we think might want to kill our children and kill your children. And if you doubt our motives, you’re welcome to, I know there’s a lot of people who hate America, but when the pressure’s on, quite frankly, we have known all along that at times America has to go it alone, and people will try to find fault with us rather than trying to at least understand our morality...

Aside from the evidence that shows such tactics are inevitably ineffective and in the long run make the situation far worse, Mr. Rohrabacher's invective begs the question.

Scapegoating has been and is being used by unscrupulous governmental officials to distract from their own inadequacies. But that's an understatement. These pirates have looted the Treasury of more than a few rich and great nations. Including our own.



But that's not enough. The objective is a complete takeover. It's not just your bank accounts these crooks want. It's your body, your mind, and your soul.



The illusion of Protection is the doorway to Dominion.



But beyond lemonade from lemons, they sure knew how to make Kool-Aid from the ashes, didn't they?

But it tastes sweet...

From the increasingly interesting Horse's Ass:

I was scanning the FDA website for information regarding the ever expanding pet food recall and food safety crisis, when I noticed a press release advising manufacturers “to be especially vigilant in assuring that glycerin, a sweetener commonly used worldwide in liquid over-the-counter and prescription drug products, is not contaminated with diethylene glycol.” The press release states no reason why they would issue such a warning at this time.

Hmm. Glycerin is an ingredient sometimes used in pet food. Diethylene glycol is a poison used in antifreeze, that is known to cause renal failure. Thousands of dogs and cats have died from renal failure, supposedly due to melamine, an industrial chemical not previously known to be highly toxic.

Can’t help but wonder.

Lady DINOcrat Steals the Helm at a Bargain Price

Palast reminds us why HHHillary is Bu$h lite, and why Clinton v.2 would simply set the stage for Bu$h v.3 in 2012. Or 2016:

...Bill Clinton used to say that, once he became president, he finally earned more money than his wife. That was a carefully crafted bit of modesty to show Bill as an aw-shucks regular guy versus Richie Rich-kid George Bush.

But Bill’s cute remark raised a question in my mind: How did Hillary get that big ol’ salary? And another question arises: how has she stayed out of prison?

The story’s a little complicated, involving a New Orleans power company, Indonesian billionaires, a New York nuclear plant and plain old influence peddling. But if we follow the money, we’ll get the picture. And it ain’t pretty.

But first, let’s stop at Wal-Mart. Read an official biography of the Senator and you’ll find her six-month stint on a child-protection task force. Yet you won’t find her SIX YEARS on the board of directors of Wal-Mart Corporation. She may have earned a Grammy for “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child.” But it takes a Governor’s wife to provide cover for Wal-Mart’s profiteering off systematic wage-enslavement of children in its factories in South America.

Sam Walton called Hillary, “My little lady.” Sam paid her an eyebrow raising sum for a director - equal to 60% of her entire not-insubstantial salary as a lawyer. By contrast, Wendy Diaz (her real name), a 13-year-old in Honduras, was paid 25 cents an hour to make shirts for the “little lady’s” label.

Hillary’s rake-in was made possible by Wal-Mart’s 100% union-free operation and out-sourcing of 100% of its manufacturing, some to prison factories in China. Now, you could say that Hillary couldn’t hear the screams of the kiddies in Kamp Wal-Mart in Honduras. After all, she relied on the intelligence provided her by the President (of Wal-Mart).

Fast forward to 1994 and the Brown ‘mother-f’ing tour guide’ business. According to Nolanda Hill, the Commerce Secretary’s long-time business partner and love interest, Brown, who died in 1996, endorsed a Hillary cash-for-access scheme ($10,000 for coffee with the President, $100,000 for a night in the Lincoln bedroom). However, Brown resented the discount rate the First Lady put on US executives joining Brown’s lucrative trade missions. ‘I’m worth more than $50,000 a pop!’ he said.

One company more than happy to pony up for a cash joy-ride with Brown was Entergy International. This electric company, based in Little Rock, became one of the world’s biggest power system operators on the planet under the Clinton regime. Interestingly, Bill Clinton began his political climb by running for Arkansas Attorney General campaigning on a pledge to fight Entergy’s electric price hikes. His pro-consumer plan was defeated in court by Entergy’s law firm - which included one Hillary Rodham.

There were more favors for Entergy. In 1998, I discovered, while working under cover for the Guardian and Observer, that Tony Blair was personally fixing the system to let Entergy to violate British policy on coal plants. Why? I picked up in my secret recordings of Blair’s cronies that calls to take care of Entergy, rules be damned, had come in from the office of ‘the Flotus’ - the First Lady of the United States.

It gets creepier. In June of 1994, Entergy’s partner in Asia, the Riady family of Indonesia paid recently-resigned Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell a $100,000 consulting fee. Odd that: Hubbell was on his way to prison for the felony crime of inflating his legal bills. Why would Asians pay a lawyer for advice on Asia who was on his way to the pokey?

Maybe it had to do with his partner in crime. I’ve conducted investigations of lawyer over-billing. It is nearly impossible for a senior lawyer to pad billing records unless the junior partner also fraudulently monkeys with time logs to make sure the records don’t give away the game. Who was Hubbell’s “little lady” junior partner? Today we call her Madame Senator.

Hillary’s logs were worth close inspection by authorities, no? But the funny thing about Hillary’s billing records: when requested for disclosure in another suit, they disappeared. First, her law firm’s computers went ka-blooey. Then the paper printouts vanished, but not before, during the 1992 Presidential campaign, they were secretly combed over, line by line, by … Web Hubbell.

Hubbell knew his own logs were phonied, and he understood the consequences of exposure. Ultimately, bloated hours on those records caused him to lose his law license, his Associate Attorney General post and his freedom. He got 21 months in the slammer.

What did Hubbell see and know about Hillary’s logs? Hubbell won’t say, except for a cryptic remark, after seeing her bills, that ‘every lawyer’ fabricates records. Hubbell pleaded guilty, but refused to answer investigators’ questions, a requirement in any plea bargain - so the judge had to sentence him to prison.

Why would Hubbell choose to do time on the chain gang over testifying about the First Lady? His prosecutors did not know at the time of the $100,000 Riady payment, the first of over half a million dollars Hubbell would receive from Clinton friends in the weeks up to his entering jail.

And those Hillary billing records? Hubbell lost them - how convenient. Then they reappeared two years later, just outside Hillary’s office, right after Hubbell announced he would refuse to testify against her.

Maybe the Clintons knew nothing about the big money flowing to prison-bound Hubbell. Knowledge of the payments would suggest they were buying Hubbell’s silence. In 1996, when the LA Times uncovered the payments, Mrs. Clinton’s First Man Bill stone-cold denied he knew anything about it.

Then, in 2000, in a deposition by the Justice Department, the President changed his tune. Investigators confronted the President with this: on June 20, 1994, Hubbell met with Hillary. Two days later, James Riady, the Asian billionaire Entergy partner, met with Hubbell for breakfast. Just a few hours later, Riady returned to the White House, then met again with Hubbell, then made two more treks to the White House. Two days later, a videotape shows the beginning of another meeting in the Oval Office between Clinton and Riady — but oddly, before they talk, the tape goes blank. Two days after that, Hubbell gets his $100,000 through a Riady bank.

Lying to journalists is a venal sin, but lying to the Feds is perjury. In his deposition, the President’s denial transformed into amnesia. He couldn’t remember if Riady mentioned the payment. Then, the President slyly opened the door to the truth. “I wouldn’t be surprised if James told me,” Clinton said. Neither would I.

What did Riady get? The Flotus herself, says Nolanda Hill, forced Brown to accept the appointment of Riady’s bag man, John Huang, as a Commerce Department deputy. According to records of calls the Guardian obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, Huang’s first order of business was to wheedle his way into confidential CIA briefings on Indonesia and China, then call Riady and his Entergy partners.

The same day Riady met the President, documents show he called on a Clinton crony at the top of the department’s Export-Import Bank. “We just came over from the Oval Office,” is a nice way to provide assurance of the ‘political connection’ required for help. These and other Riady team meetings at Commerce are marked ’social’. Yet, shortly thereafter, the department agreed to promote and fund the Riady-Entergy China venture.

Influence is not a victimless crime. Riady and his minions’ visits to the White House (94 times!) included successful requests for the President to meet Indonesian dictator Suharto and to kill negative reports on East Timor and working conditions in Indonesia. Timorese and Indonesians paid for these policy flips with blood.

Has Entergy’s investment in Hillary’s jail-bird partner continued to pay dividends?

The difference between a DINOcrat and a Rethuglican preznit remains $ x 1,000,000. Where the Clintons pirated hundreds of thousands of dollars, the Bu$hies pirate hundreds of billions. Still, perpetuation of a criminal system is the chronic failure of the Republic and the cause of its likely demise.

Meet the New Moon Rocket

Pretty much the same as the old moon rocket- except a "lighter more agile" version:



What's wrong with this picture? Admittedly it's an artist's schematic, but hey, NASA posted it. There are no specs available. Possibly that's classified information. Assuming after a few hundred billion invested any exist. But that's classified, too.



Compare it to this:



The Ares rocket is smaller than the Saturn. But NASA sez:

The new crew spacecraft will have more volume than the Apollo capsules, reducing development time, boosting stability, and permitting safe travel for up to six crewmembers.

Well isn't that cozy. How will they get there and back again on a smaller launch platform? By clapping louder, so Tinkerbell can fill up their fuel modules in deep space?

Now, the "deep space" version is a little bigger:



There are some interesting claims made about it:

Future astronauts will ride to orbit on Ares I, which uses a single five-segment solid rocket booster, a derivative of the space shuttle's solid rocket booster, for the first stage. A liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen J-2X engine derived from the J-2 engine used on Apollo's second stage will power the crew exploration vehicle's second stage. The Ares I can lift more than 55,000 pounds to low Earth orbit.

Ares V, a heavy lift launch vehicle, will use five RS-68 liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen engines mounted below a larger version of the space shuttle's external tank, and two five-segment solid propellant rocket boosters for the first stage. The upper stage will use the same J-2X engine as the Ares I. The Ares V can lift more than 286,000 pounds to low Earth orbit and stands approximately 360 feet tall. This versatile system will be used to carry cargo and the components into orbit needed to go to the moon and later to Mars...



...The Ares I first stage is a single, five-segment reusable solid rocket booster derived from the Space Shuttle Program's reusable solid rocket motor, which burns a specially formulated and shaped solid propellant.

...The Ares I second, or upper, stage is propelled by a J-2X main engine fueled with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.

So this slender module is designed to replace the shuttle. This is the actual Moon rocket (to be, beotches):



Like the Ares 1, this uses liquid oxygen/ hydrogen propellents. These guys really are going back to the future, aren't they? The better to inflate their budgets with, my dear.

Triggered Finger

Okay, somebody had to say it, so it figures Jeff Wells would hear it.

Cryptogon on some pretty oddball things about that Virginia Tech incident.

According to ABC News:

"...Lucinda Roy, a co-director of the creative writing program at Virginia Tech, taught Cho in a poetry class in fall of 2005 and later worked with him one-on-one after she became concerned about his behavior and themes in his writings..."

In a different ABC News article, Brad Garrett, a former FBI agent / ABC News consultant, provided some interesting commentary:

'The date of the first gun purchase will likely serve as the time of “some triggering mechanism that was very important” to Cho said Garrett, an expert on profiling murderers.'

That made me want to read through the first ABC News article again, and I noticed something that I had skipped the first time.

Let’s look at Sun-Kyung, Cho’s sister:

"Cho’s parents live in a townhouse development in Centreville, a suburb of Washington. They own a dry-cleaning shop nearby.

"His older sister, Sun-Kyung, graduated from Princeton University in 2004. A source, who asked to be identified as a senior Administration official, said she works for McNeil Technologies, a firm contracted by the State Department to manage reconstruction efforts in Iraq."

Woh. Ok. Stop right there.

What does McNeil Technologies do?

Oh, the usual black bag intelligence agency cut out kind of stuff… Actually, there’s more here than you can shake a stick at.

The McNeil Technologies Services page lists the following categories: Language Services, Information Management Services, Program Support Services, Security Services, Intelligence Services.

I clicked on Intelligence Services first.

Intelligence Services -> Overview

"McNeil’’s Intelligence and Language Center (ILC) provides unmatched expertise in the areas of Intelligence and Language Services. The combination of Intelligence and Language guarantees our clients mission success.

"Our services and capabilities include:

* Intelligence Architecture Operations in support of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC).
* Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) which supports the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and other government agencies, and
* HUMINT (Human Intel) operations in support of DIA, or with federal counter Intel outsourcing effort. Our
* Linguist operations, with linguists deployed in various theaters of operations,
* Translation operations which include document and website translation,
* Testing, Training and Research of language and cultural awareness."

Under Intelligence Services -> Key Solutions, we see:

"HUMINT Operations:
Classified CONUS and OCONUS support by seasoned Intel professionals."

That means support for intelligence operations inside and outside of the continental United States.

...Cui bono? Who benefits? At some point in the future, would a company that provides physical security for large organizations benefit from what just happened at Virginia Tech? It’s obviously just a coincidence that the sister of the shooter works for a large provider of these services. Right? A company with more publicly stated connections to U.S. Intelligence than you can shake a stick at… A company that is providing ongoing support to current U.S. Intelligence operations…

...Who/what owns McNeil Technologies?

According to the McNeil Technologies About page:

In July 2004 Veritas Capital acquired McNeil Technologies and its subsidiaries.

Veritas Capital is a private equity investment firm headquartered in New York. Founded in 1992, Veritas’ primary objective is to partner with experienced and entrepreneurial management teams to develop leading companies in their respective markets. As a long-term investor in the defense, aerospace, and government services sectors, Veritas has established a Defense & Aerospace Advisory Council consisting primarily of former high-ranking government and military officials. The Council provides Veritas with insight into industry trends from both a business and policy perspective. Veritas’ principals bring over six decades of collective investing experience through a variety of economic conditions.

With over a $ 1 billion in investments, Veritas is able to offer unprecedented resources to its portfolio companies to help them satisfy their clients’ requirements...

The comments to this post are interesting reading, too.

Cho's writings sounded like he was the victim of abuse, but whether it was from his parents, his sister's professional associates, or his own feverish mind we will likely never know.

But some connections are quite a bit closer in degree than are comfortable, and some triggers are more than bad dreams.

A few thousand, more like it.

Caption on a Washington Pravda pic:

A widespread contamination of pet food has been linked to the deaths of several dogs and cats and thousands of reports of sick animals throughout the country.

What's said towards the very end of the article:

...Officials said the FDA has received 17,000 reports of pets that owners believe were sickened or killed by contaminated food. About 8,000 reports, roughly half of them involving animals that died, have been formally entered into the FDA's tracking system for further analysis.

Roughly half of 8,000 is roughly 4,000 dead dogs and cats, or roughly a quarter of those sickened.

Roughly.